


Whatever a Moon Has Always Meant

by SonnetCXVI



Series: The Deepest Secret Nobody Knows [3]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-07
Updated: 2016-12-07
Packaged: 2018-09-07 01:14:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8777293
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonnetCXVI/pseuds/SonnetCXVI
Summary: "I have never loved anything as I love you," because really, that's the whole point.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I apologize that this series has posted in a weird manner. I had intended to post it under one title with subtitled chapters, but I couldn't make that happen. So, Parts 2, 3, and 4 have or will post under the chapter names, as separate works in the same series. Chapter 1 is a poor orphan, I guess. It posted as an actual chapter.
> 
> This part may seem like the end, but it isn't. I will post the remaining part tomorrow night. Please read all the way through if you want the complete story.
> 
> Thanks for all your kind comments and your encouragement.

I

The day that Cosima asks Delphine to cut her hair is the last day Delphine cries in front of her.

“It’s too hard to keep clean. It’s too heavy. I just can’t anymore,” explains Cosima. 

“But I don’t know how to cut hair,” says Delphine gently. “Would you like me to ask someone to come to the house and do it?” 

“No, I want you to do it,” murmurs Cosima. 

Delphine sets up a chair in the bathroom and cranks up the heater. When the bathroom is warm, she places a clean sheet on the floor, assists Cosima in, and wraps her shoulders in a blanket. 

“Don’t cry, baby. It’s just hair,” Cosima says to Delphine’s reflection in the mirror when she sees that Delphine’s eyes are brimming. 

“I know. I’m sorry,” says Delphine, giving her shoulder a squeeze. She looks into the mirror and smiles. “ _T’es prêt_?” 

Cosima nods. “Don’t cut my ear off,” she jokes when Delphine picks up the scissors. 

“Of course not, _chérie_. How would you appreciate my sexy accent if I did that?”

When Delphine has finished cutting, she carefully unbraids and untangles the hair closest to Cosima’s scalp. Then she brushes it out, being careful not to pull. It’s wavy and soft and falls about her ears.

“I’ve never been able to do this before,” she says, running her fingers through it. “Really sexy.” Then she walks around to the front of the chair and gives Cosima the once over.  


“You look a lot like Sarah with your hair down.” she says with a big smile. “And that totally works for me. Sarah’s the hot one.”

“You’re such a ho,” laughs Cosima as Delphine helps her back to bed. “A great big willowy ho.”

Later, when Cosima is asleep, Delphine gathers up the glossy hair and places it in a little cotton bag. She is careful to gather it all. _I will miss your beautiful hair_ she thinks as she places the bag in her dresser and closes the drawer. _I will miss everything_.

II

When Cosima awakens, she finds Delphine reading in the lamplight. Delphine looks up with a smile and rises to give her a sip of water, holding the straw carefully so that it doesn’t scrape the roof of her mouth. “Do you think you could eat something?” she asks softly. Cosima shakes her head.

“Let’s at least do something about your lips, OK?” she says and squeezes a bit of balm onto her finger, rubbing it gently into Cosima’s cracking skin. 

Cosima pats the bed and Delphine sits beside her and takes her hand. She reaches over and removes a tube of lotion from the nightstand. Squirting some into her palm, she rubs her hands together and then gently starts to massage the lotion into Cosima’s hands, being careful not to bruise her fragile skin. She begins to sing softly. 

“ _I got sunshine, on a cloudy day. When it’s cold outside, I got the month of May. I bet you’ll say, what can make me feel this way? My girl, talking ‘bout my girl._ ” She stops and raises Cosima’s palm to her lips and kisses it. 

“I have always loved your hands,” she says. “So expressive and capable. Such a part of every memory I have of you.” 

“Born to hand jive, baby,” says Cosima, offering a grin.

Delphine smiles back and continues to massage her hands and wrists. 

“How do I look?” asks Cosima, clearly referring to her hair. 

Delphine looks down at her, her eyes dark and soft. “You are as lovely as ever, _chérie_. You are the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.”

III

They have the conversation one afternoon after Delphine has helped Cosima to the bathroom and back and has settled her in an armchair near the bedroom window. She is standing at the window, adjusting the curtains to let more light into the room.

“I want to die at home. I want you to take care of it.”

Delphine turns. 

“What? No. We are not at that point yet. We don’t need to talk about this now,” she says. She crosses to the chair. “Scott is working, he ….” Her voice tapers off when she sees the look on Cosima’s face.

“Look, I want to discuss this while I still feel pretty good. I don’t want to be making these decisions when I’m doped up or weak or whatever.”

Delphine just looks at her.

“I want to die at home, Delphine. I mean it. And I don’t want you to have to watch me suffer and disappear after nothing can be done.”

Delphine sits down on the ottoman. “What are you telling me?” 

Cosima gives her a look; Delphine knows very well what she is asking for.

“You’re a doctor. You know what to do. Just turn up the pain meds.” 

“Cosima, I…” She closes her eyes and lets her head falls forward.

“I know that this sucks. I know that it’s a horrible thing to ask. I’m sorry.” She tears up. “It’s just … I saw Jennifer. I know what will happen.” 

Delphine looks up, stricken. 

“I need to know that you’ll help me. I don’t want it to be a stranger.” She is crying. Delphine bends forward to embrace her, pressing her warm cheek against Cosima’s wet one. They sit like this until Delphine nods her head. 

“Thank you,” says Cosima, her voice half-smile and half-sob.

Delphine sits up and takes Cosima’s face in her hands, looking directly into her eyes. “I love you, Cosima. There is nothing you can give me that I won’t carry for you. Nothing. Do you understand?”

Cosima begins to sob in earnest and Delphine reaches to hold her again. “I’m afraid,” she cries. 

“It’s OK to be afraid. I’m afraid too.”

IV

Sarah and Alison come, bringing food and insisting that Delphine take a shower and a nap.

“How is she today?” Alison asks as they stand outside the door to the bedroom. 

“She’s weak. She barely eats. She’s been resisting but I put in a line this morning so that I can supplement her intake. And the pain is getting worse. I’m going to have to start medicating her more deeply, so she’s on an infusion pump.”

“Jesus,” mutters Sarah. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.” 

Delphine looks down for a moment and then back up at the sisters. “I know this is hard.”

She places her hand on Alison’s arm and turns slightly to look at Sarah. “But I want you to be prepared. A lot has happened in the last few days. She’s in a hospital bed now. It’s higher and it’s easier for me to move her and bathe her. And she asked me to cut her hair. She looks ….” She presses her lips together and exhales. 

“Don’t be surprised if she sleeps through most of your visit, even though she really wants to see you,” says Delphine. She squeezes Alison’s arm.

“Come get me immediately if anything changes, OK?”

They nod and step into the bedroom.

“Hey, geek monkey,” says Sarah.

V

“You should finish the house. The best part of my life was here. It makes me happy to think of you here ... singing.”

VI

Delphine sits in the dark watching the lights on the medical equipment. Machines note Cosima’s blood pressure and blood oxygen level, record her heart rate and rhythm, pump oxygen through a tube into her failing lungs, administer precise doses of pain medication. Red and green lights on little tan machines, marking everything down. Monitoring her.

All of this data, she thinks bitterly, and not a bit of it reflects the truth about Cosima. Where’s the machine that records her loyalty or her empathy? Her sweetness, her wit, her fucking _goodness_? Any idiot at Dyad with the right clearance can look at a file that charts her resting heart rate for thirty years, but who will open that file and see her heart? How brave, how smart, how loving, how generous she is? The things that make her the only one, the only one of her? Delphine is outraged. For the first time, she hates the science.

In the morning she removes everything but the infusion pump and the oxygen. She will take the readings herself. She will remember everything.

VII

What time is it?” asks Cosima.

“A little after eight, I think.” 

“A.M. or P.M.?” 

“It’s night, sweetheart.”

VIII

The sestras begin sitting with Delphine and Cosima in shifts, one person in the sick room and the others asleep in the guest room or on the sofa. They make simple meals like scrambled eggs but barely touch them. They cry. They treat Scott, who materializes one afternoon and won’t go home, as though he were their brother, splitting the chores with him and comforting him as they try to comfort each other. They clean the house from top to bottom. They help Delphine change the sheets after she has bathed Cosima. They dispose of all the waste exactly as Delphine instructs. They discuss the details of this wretchedness and what will come after. They wait in terrified anticipation. They cling to each other.

IX

When it is time, the family gathers in the bedroom. Delphine has turned down Cosima’s meds so that she is awake, but the pain is strong and she groans and clutches at the sheets.

“I’m sorry,” says Delphine to the sestras, “but you must be quick.”

They come forward to say goodbye, aware that this is the last time they will all be together, the last moment that they won’t be heartbroken. Gently they caress Cosima’s arms and her calves, afraid to disturb the lines running into her hands, but needing to touch her; Helena stands barely holding Cosima’s foot, not knowing what else to do. 

They tell her that they love her and that they are proud of her, that no one did more for them and for all the sisters unknown, that they will never forget how joyfully and unconditionally she loved them. Bent over her with their tears and fluttering voices, they resemble nothing so much as little birds, huddled together against the cold. They are just as helpless.

Cosima does her best to keep her face tranquil and to say goodbye with her eyes, but when she begins to grimace and moan Delphine steps forward and they retreat from the bed. Alison falls into Sarah’s arms, pressing her face into her shirt front. Sarah holds her as though she is on guard, upright and motionless, tears streaming down her face as she tries to keep her hysteria at bay. And Helena, poor Helena, alone at the foot of the bed as another of the sestras dies, understanding finally what her life has meant and wishing that she could change things for at least this one. 

At the sisters’ retreat Cosima throws out her hand, fingers spread, the momentary vacuum before Delphine gets to her terrifying. 

“I’m here, Cosima. I’m right here.” 

Delphine looks at Scott and then crawls carefully onto the hospital bed, just as she had done that lifetime ago when her body warmth had been enough. She intertwines their fingers and says, “You enchanted me, Cosima. From the moment I met you.” Of everyone in the room, she is the most calm.

Cosima closes her eyes for a moment and when she opens them, a tear slides down her cheek. She turns her head to Delphine and groans out a single word, to which Delphine replies, “ _Oui_? Of course, _chérie_.”

“I will find you. I promise,” she says softly, holding Cosima’s eyes. “Don’t be afraid.” 

She gives Cosima a little smile and nods her head slightly, eyebrows raised, requesting permission. For a moment they gaze at each other and then Cosima nods back.

“ _Je t’aime, Cosima. Je vous aimerais toujours_ ,” whispers Delphine. 

“OK, Scott,” she says. 

She lightly squeezes Cosima’s hand and begins to sing gently, “ _Hey, where did we go, days when the rain came? Down in the hollow, playing a new game._ ” It’s a silly tune, really. She doesn’t know why she has chosen it but Delphine trusts that Cosima will hear the _I love you_ in it. She keeps her voice clear and steady, a little beacon in the ruins at the end of their world, offering this lullaby and this goodbye as they step off together for the last time. It’s a miracle that she can maintain her composure, but she wants Cosima to have something to cling to, so she concentrates on her love instead of her grief. “ _Standing in the sunlight laughing, Hide behind a rainbow’s wall, slipping and a-sliding, all along the waterfall, with you…._ ”

It dawns on her that the next words are why she has chosen this song. She clutches at her composure but her voice falters when she gets to the words, “ _my brown eyed girl_.” It’s too much; she can’t stop herself. These last words sound strangled. 

It doesn’t matter. Cosima can’t hear her anymore. 

Delphine begins to cry. Scott reaches out to turn off the pump.


End file.
